Top Nassau County prosecutor resigns, blasts State Attorney Angela Corey

Complains Nassau being treated as "unwanted step-child"

Bob.Mack@jacksonville.com -- 3/15/12-- Asst. State Attorney Wesley White talks about the case after the sentencing outside the courtroom. Convicted of killing his parents with a baseball bat in 2009, Gregory David Larkin was sentenced to the death penalty in both cases at his sentencing March 15, 2012 in the Nassau County Courthouse in Yulee, FL in front of Judge Robert Foster. (The Florida Times-Union, Bob Mack)

The top prosecutor in Nassau County quit this week by email, criticizing his boss, State Attorney Angela Corey, for breaking campaign promises.

In his email resignation, Assistant State Attorney Wesley White told Corey she had retreated from a commitment she made before her election in 2008 not to treat Nassau as an “unwanted step-child.”

He also said her administration would be judged more on the promises she kept than by victories and defeats.

“As you know, shortly after we discussed your candidacy, and throughout your term in office, you pledged that Nassau County (though having a smaller population than Clay or Duval) would not be looked upon as an ‘unwanted step-child,’ ” White said. “Moreover, that a fundamental precept of that pledge, and your service as State Attorney, was that attorneys would manage and work in the county where they resided.”

He said that’s not been the case but he declined to expand on his email Friday afternoon.

White, whose salary was $130,000 a year, is a Nassau County resident.

State Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Jackelyn Barnard pointed out that two Nassau prosecutors, Laura Coggin and Beverly Collins, and the majority of the 10-person support staff live within the county.

Barnard said Senior Division Chief Stephen Siegel will manage the Nassau office starting Monday. Division Chief Donna Thurson has also been transferred to the Nassau office.

Neither lives in Nassau.

White was a vocal supporter of Corey when she first ran for state attorney in 2008 when he was a private Fernandina Beach lawyer. At one point he deposed then-State Attorney Harry Shorstein and Assistant State Attorney Jay Plotkin, Shorstein’s preferred successor, as part of a public records request he made to determine whether there was any campaigning going on for Plotkin inside the State Attorney’s Office.

After Corey defeated Plotkin she hired White and put him in charge of the Nassau office. He soon became embroiled in a long-term public feud with Nassau Sheriff Tommy Seagraves.

The sheriff at one point asked Corey to fire White because of his investigation of a deputy and supervisor involved in the exchange of tires and rims from a forfeiture truck to the deputy’s personal vehicle.

Seagraves said he was upset that White’s tactics included what he described as an attempt to bully information out of the deputy’s father, a Callahan pastor. He said he also objected to White’s effort to reach former Nassau Undersheriff Michael Edwards, which Seagraves believes was done to learn if Edwards recently quit over Seagraves’ handling of the tires and rims case.